It may not be the most memorable moment in the history of a franchise with two NBA finals appearances, but the Nets suffered a pair of defeats in as many nights in 1998, each to the Miami Heat. In one of 706 home-away series over back-to-back nights in NBA history, according to Stats LLC, New Jersey lost 95-93 at home to Miami on February 28, then lost 85-84 in Miami the next night. Had the Nets won just of those games, they would have drawn Miami in the first round of the NBA playoffs rather than Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, who swept the Nets.

This season, Brooklyn is the home of the Nets, and the popularity of home-and-away series is back on the rise. The Nets’ pair of games this week against Milwaukee were the seventh home-and-away of the season, after the NBA averaged just six a season over the last two decades. And the pair was just the 23rd of 706 in which each game was decided by three points or fewer, compared to 150 times when each of the pair of games was decided by 10 points or more. It was the first pair of consecutive thrillers since those two New Jersey-Miami games 15 years earlier. This time, it was the Nets who came out on top each time. First, in Brooklyn, Johnson’s jumpers sent the game into overtime, then won it. Then, in Milwaukee, the Nets rallied furiously in the fourth, then clinched only when Monta Ellis missed all three free throws with his Bucks trailing by three points.

It’s a typical pattern that hard-fought success one night spills over into the next night against the same opponent. Of the 23 pairs of games that were each decided by three points or fewer, 15 were swept, according to Stats. (That’s especially surprising because when the pair of games weren’t that close, almost exactly 50% of the time the first night’s loser won the next night.) More often than not, the sweeps came when a road team won, then rode the momentum home the next night. That was the case in 1998, but not this week, when the Nets started with the Johnson-won thriller in Brooklyn.

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